ALBERTO PEPE

"The Einsteinian revolution may have redefined the absolute basics of matter, energy, space and time,..."

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 19:12:34 -0400

“The Einsteinian revolution may have redefined the absolute basics of matter, energy, space and time, but the limits of our mental equipment keep us in our evolutionary homelands, in the savannah of commonsense.”

- Ian McEwan, The originality of the species. The Guardian. Friday 23 March 2012.

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 10:06:00 -0500

The relationship between acquaintanceship and coauthorship in scientific collaboration networks

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:25:46 -0400

Author: Alberto Pepe

Title: The relationship between acquaintanceship and coauthorship in scientific collaboration networks

Venue: Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62: 2121–2132. doi: 10.1002/asi.21629

Abstract: This article examines the relationship between acquaintanceship and coauthorship patterns in a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional, geographically distributed research center. Two social networks are constructed and compared: a network of coauthorship, representing how researchers write articles with one another, and a network of acquaintanceship, representing how those researchers know each other on a personal level, based on their responses to an online survey. Statistical analyses of the topology and community structure of these networks point to the importance of small-scale, local, personal networks predicated upon acquaintanceship for accomplishing collaborative work in scientific communities.

"What had once been dedicated to the soul was now dedicated to the sale"

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:03:05 -0400

“What had once been dedicated to the soul was now dedicated to the sale”

- Ignatius Reilly

One, None, and One Hundred Thousand (Facebook) Profiles

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:31:00 -0400

Q: What is the difference between Luigi Pirandello and Mark Zuckerberg?

A: 99,999 identities. Give or take.

During an interview last year, Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, stated that*:

You have one identity. […] The days of you having a different image for your co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly. […] Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.

Luigi Pirandello, an Italian novelist and playwright of last century, would have had a different opinion. His 1925 classic novel Uno, Nessuno, Centomila (“One, No One and One Hundred Thousand”) recounts the tragedy of Vitangelo Moscarda, a man who struggles to reclaim a coherent and unitary identity for himself upon realizing that he inhabits one hundred thousand identities: one identity for each one of his 100,000 acquaintances. In order to “see clearly and be truly himself”, Moscarda embarks on a series of carefully crafted social experiments with his own identity.

What would Moscarda’s identity tragedy look like if he had a Facebook account?

This week I am presenting/performing an abridged version of a working paper I coauthored with Spencer Wolff and Karen Van Godtsenhoven titled One, None and One Hundred Thousand Proﬁles: Re-imagining the Pirandellian Identity Dilemma in the Era of Online Social Networks. In the article, we transplant Moscarda’s identity play from its ofﬂine setting (a small town in Northern Italy at the beginning of last century) to the contemporary arena of online social networks, imagining how Moscarda would go about defending the integrity of his selfhood in the face of the discountenancing inﬂuences of the online world.

The preprint of the article is available on arXiv (http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.3428)

The presentation/performance is part of a Symposium for the Dynamics of the Internet and Society hosted by the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford in September 2011.

*quoted in David Kirkpatrick’s book, The Facebook Effect.

The use of microblogging for field-based scientific research

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 15:29:00 -0400

Authors: Alberto Pepe, Matthew S. Mayernik

Title: The use of microblogging for field-based scientific research

Venue: Proceedings of the 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Science (HICSS-45 2012)

Abstract: Documenting the context in which data are collected is an integral part of the scientific research lifecycle. In field-based research, contextual information provides a detailed description of scientific practices and thus enables data interpretation and reuse. For field data, losing contextual information often means losing the data altogether. Yet, documenting the context of distributed, collaborative, field-based research can be a significant challenge due to the unpredictable nature of real-world settings and to the high degree of variability in data collection methods and scientific practices of different researchers. In this article, we propose the use of microblogging as a mechanism to support collection, ingestion, and publication of contextual information about the variegated digital artifacts that are produced in field research. We perform interviews with scholars involved in field-based environmental and urban sensing research, to determine the extent of adoption of Twitter and similar microblogging platforms and their potential use for field-specific research applications. Based on the results of these interviews as well as participant observation of field activities, we present the design, development, and pilot evaluation of a microblogging application integrated with an existing data collection platform on a handheld device. We investigate whether microblogging accommodates the variable and unpredictable nature of highly mobile research and whether it represents a suitable mechanism to document the context of field research data early in the scientific information lifecycle.

Twitter sentiment and socio-economic phenomena

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 11:14:38 -0400

Authors: Johan Bollen, Huina Mao, Alberto Pepe

Title: Modeling public mood and emotion: Twitter sentiment and socio-economic phenomena

Venue: Proceedings of the Fifth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM 2011), 17-21 July 2011, Barcelona, Spain

Abstract: Microblogging is a form of online communication by which users broadcast brief text updates, also known as tweets, to the public or a selected circle of contacts. A variegated mosaic of microblogging uses has emerged since the launch of Twitter in 2006: daily chatter, conversation, information sharing, and news commentary, among others. Regardless of their content and intended use, tweets often convey pertinent information about their author’s mood status. As such, tweets can be regarded as temporally-authentic microscopic instantiations of public mood state. In this article, we perform a sentiment analysis of all public tweets broadcasted by Twitter users between August 1 and December 20, 2008. For every day in the timeline, we extract six dimensions of mood (tension, depression, anger, vigor, fatigue, confusion) using an extended version of the Profile of Mood States (POMS), a well-established psychometric instrument. We compare our results to fluctuations recorded by stock market and crude oil price indices and major events in media and popular culture, such as the U.S. Presidential Election of November 4, 2008 and Thanksgiving Day. We find that events in the social, political, cultural and economic sphere do have a significant, immediate and highly specific effect on the various dimensions of public mood. We speculate that large scale analyses of mood can provide a solid platform to model collective emotive trends in terms of their predictive value with regards to existing social as well as economic indicators.

ASIS&T award

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 16:23:00 -0400

I am very happy to report that I am the the recipient of the 2010 ASIS&T ProQuest Doctoral Dissertation Award, for my dissertation titled “Structure and Evolution of Scientific Collaboration Networks in a Modern Research Collaboratory”. ASIS&T is the American Society for Information Science & Technology. Here is the complete list of awards.

The award will be presented at the ASIST Annual Conference in Pittsburgh, on Tuesday October 26, 2010. I will be there to receive the award and present a short summary of my dissertation research.

Here is the blurb associated with the award:

“Structure and Evolution of Scientific Collaboration Networks in a Modern Research Collaboratory” by Alberto Pepe, was an exemplary, innovative, pioneering, and potentially highly influential dissertation in an increasingly important area of study in information science, that is, scientific collaboration throughout the world and across disciplines. Pepe investigated collaborative ecology of a multi-disciplinary and distributed science environment, the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS). By use of survey research and network analysis, this dissertation focused on three aspects of network interactions: co-authorship of professional publications, scholarly communication via network mailing lists, and interpersonal acquaintanceship patterns. Pepe’s work explored social / scientific network analysis theories and concepts, and examined the topology, structure, and evolution of these networks in relation to the disciplinary and institutional arrangements of CENS. This research’s methodology and data analysis were well designed, logically organized, thoroughly explained, and comprehensively documented. Pepe’s dissertation provides insights into how scientists communicate with each other on a day-to-day basis and how they negotiate the distribution of tasks and evaluate the contributions of one another to the project as a whole. As scholarly publishing and science itself adapt to the Internet age, Pepe’s work will stand as a model for information scientists studying these important developments.

postdoc!

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 18:01:45 -0400

After an eventful summer spent traveling through Europe, Japan, and across America, I am very pleased to report that this week I join the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard University for a postdoctoral research position.

I will work primarily with Alyssa Goodman, Professor of Astronomy, whose research ranges from the study of star formation to data visualization and scientific communication. My broader collaboration team will include August Muench, Rahul Dave, Alberto Accomazzi, and Michael Kurtz. I also plan to collaborate closely with Microsoft Research (WorldWide Telescope initiative) and the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (Dataverse initiative).

My research will fall under several possible rubrics, including topics such as i) the semantic linking of literature and data in astronomy, ii) information visualization, iii) citation and discovery of research data, iv) network analyses of scientific collaboration communities in astronomy, and v) the study of the role of social media technologies on scientific dissemination practices.

A set of (slightly overexposed) pictures taken on the islands of...

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 12:04:00 -0400

A set of (slightly overexposed) pictures taken on the islands of Japan and Sicily. Click here to see the entire set.

An in-depth longitudinal analysis of assortative mixing patterns

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:28:21 -0400

Authors: Alberto Pepe, Marko A. Rodriguez

Title: Collaboration in sensor network research: an in-depth longitudinal analysis of assortative mixing patterns

Venue: Scientometrics. Volume 84, Number 3. September, 2010

Abstract: Many investigations of scientific collaboration are based on statistical analyses of large networks constructed from bibliographic repositories. These investigations often rely on a wealth of bibliographic data, but very little or no other information about the individuals in the network, and thus, fail to illustrate the broader social and academic landscape in which collaboration takes place. In this article, we perform an in-depth longitudinal analysis of a relatively small network of scientific collaboration (N = 291) constructed from the bibliographic record of a research centerin the development and application of wireless and sensor network technologies. We perform a preliminary analysis of selected structural properties of the network, computing its range, configuration and topology. We then support our preliminary statistical analysis with an in-depth temporal investigation of the assortative mixing of selected node characteristics, unveiling the researchers’ propensity to collaborate preferentially with others with a similar academic profile. Our qualitative analysis of mixing patterns offers clues as to the nature of the scientific community being modeled in relation to its organizational, disciplinary, institutional, and international arrangements of collaboration.

chase

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 22:58:00 -0400

Chase is an installation by Liz Magic Laser on display at Derek Eller Gallery (615 West 27th Street, New York) from May 21 to June 26, 2010. With chase, Liz Magic Laser reinterprets Bertolt Brecht’s 1926 play Man equals Man. The project includes a feature-length video, an installation of ephemera from the production of chase as well as a theatrical set that serves as a backdrop for a live performance.

Working in collaboration with nine actors, Laser staged Brecht’s play in the ATM vestibules of banks throughout New York City. Videotaping each actor’s performance separately, she edited the scenes, creating a complete version of the narrative. The element of estrangement in the original play is heightened through jump cuts and spatiotemporal shifts.

I was fortunate to be part of this project (in a very small way)! Inspired by a paper I wrote on the non-placeness of airports, Spencer Wolff and Liz Magic Laser asked me some questions about non-places. The text of the interview is on display at the Derek Eller Gallery and is reprinted below.

***

A Skype discussion between Alberto Pepe Gentile of UCLA, Department of Information Science, and Spencer Wolff of Yale University, Department of Comparative Literature.

Interviewer: Hi? It’s Spencer from Yale. Can you hear me?

Dr. Gentile: Yes?

Interviewer: Is your camera working? I can’t see you.

Dr. Gentile: I can see you.

Interviewer: That’s weird. There’s no video on my screen. Hold on….hmmm….it’s not working. Ok, let’s just get started with the interview.

Dr. Gentile: Fine with me.

Interviewer: So, I’ve rung you on Skype, to interview you about your work on Non-places. Can you define a Non-place? What is it?

Dr. Gentile: Non-place is a term originally coined by the French Anthropologist Marc Augé. Non-places are unlived transient arenas that resist any sort of subjective, emotional attachment: motorways, airports, bank vestibules, elevators…etc.

Interviewer: What’s so special about them?

Dr. Gentile: Well, many things. For one, they do not incite any sense of belonging. They are places of dual spectatorship and spectacle, and, as result, Non-places disrupt our traditional assumptions about comportment, posture, proxemics…

Interviewer: Proxemics?

Dr. Gentile: Proxemics are culturally determined relations of space, what you could call the body-space that people maintain between themselves while they interact. For instance individuals from Nordic cultures prefer greater interpersonal distances than those from Latin cultures.

Interviewer: So it’s about how much space we give each other in the street?

Dr. Gentile: Well, proxemics are universally applicable to all sorts of space. In the U.S., Edward Hall conducted a wonderful study in men’s urinals where he showed that if there are five urinals men will evenly space themselves at urinals 1,3 5, in order to maintain distance. If there are men at urinals 1 and 3 and a tester comes in and situates himself at urinal number 2, both men get visibly upset and sometimes become aggressive.

Interviewer: That’s happened to me before.

Dr. Gentile: Or in an elevator, if you notice, no matter how many people are inside, they will space themselves according to predictable, iterative patterns using verbal and bodily cues: an unspoken elevator etiquette. There’s another experiment that I’ve always been fond of. I think it was done at Stanford, but they placed an experimenter in an elevator facing the back wall and videotaped the results. So the door opens and there’s an empty elevator with this guy in there whose face you cannot see.

Interviewer: What happened?

Dr. Gentile: No one would get into the elevator.

Interviewer: Honestly it sounds kind of spooky.

Dr. Gentile: Well that’s the nature of Non-places. Haunted houses were once “places” that became Non-places. Lived places come with a grammar, a script, if you will, of how to act. But when you enter an abandoned house you’re not quite sure how to behave and that’s frightening. Have you noticed how all haunted houses look alike to some degree?

Interviewer: Sure

Dr. Gentle: This is characteristic of Non-places, flatness, sameness, aseptic uniformity. Most Non-places are supermodern. They are devoted to the anonymous processing of goods, people, services, and money. Also, these processing mechanisms have to be happen fast. The best and most efficient airports, for example, are those in which you spend as little time as possible. Fluidity and speed, in turn, are attained by control and mechanization. This is heightened, in airports or ATM vestibules, by the sense of being surveyed and managed by video cameras. For this reason, in Non-places we rely particularly heavily on verbal or visual cues from others, what you might call embodied instruction. We’re a little out to sea, unsure what play to perform, so in that sense Non-places are ideal sites for revolutionary action.

Interviewer: How so?

Dr. Gentile: The Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu said that all societies wanting to make a ‘new man’ should approach this task through processes of deculturation and reculturation focused on bodily practices. That’s why revolutionaries place such a heavy emphasis on the seemingly most insignificant details of dress, bearing, physical and verbal manners. If I remember correctly, Bourdieu said something along the lines of, “revolutionaries entrust to the body in abbreviated and practical, so mnemonic form, the arbitrary content of the culture.” If you want to give birth to a “new man” the best thing to do is to destabilize a person’s given identity, and then endow that person with a new performative.

Interviewer: Maybe you should define a performative for the reader.

Dr. Gentile: Performatives, in J.L. Austin’s and especially Judith Butler’s work, are these pre-scripted identities or roles that I’ve been talking about. Think of Sartre’s waiter in Being and Nothingness who plays at being at waiter instead of just being one. He’s enacting a performative. His waiter is determined by a particular theatrical staging, a “place”: the French café. Places, lived arenas, like a café, as opposed to an elevator, are already outfitted with embodied and discursive grammars. That’s why it’s hard to reprogram someone in a “place.” Imagine walking into a posh restaurant. First you look at all the props and staging, the mise en scene, and then you look at the people who are holding themselves in a certain way and you try to “act on your best behavior.” If you walk into a café there is a different staging and you know you can behave differently. Perhaps when you were a child and you walked into a nice restaurant for the first time, you were unsure how to act, but by the time you’ve become an adult you’ve already memorized your lines.

Interviewer: So the whole world’s a stage?

Dr. Gentile: No. Only parts of it. Though we are gradually developing formulaic props and bodily grammars for some Non-places, like airports—for instance taking off your shoes when you go through the metal detectors –elevators, urinals, etc. aren’t similarly equipped. Imagine walking into a fancy restaurant, le cirque, and a man is standing with his nose pressed against a pillar at the center of the restaurant. That would not be spooky like in the elevator; it would be ridiculous. The man would be challenged immediately and forced to leave. But in the elevator you don’t know how to act, you don’t know your lines, so not a single person challenged the experimenter with his back to the door. People were just frightened and refused to go in. This is why Al Qaeda situates its training camps in remote and unfamiliar locations, and by the same token, when a government wants to reprogram someone, say using torture and brainwashing, they do the same, Guantanamo for example. In Non-places we are vulnerable because our scripts, our habitual performatives are unreliable if not useless.

Interviewer: So if you get someone into a Non-place it’s easier to tell them what to do?

Dr. Gentile: Not, tell them, but show them. When you want to reprogram someone you rely on positive content, which can only be conveyed through bodily staging. Take a soldier for instance, or a child, the verbal instruction they receive tends to be injunctive: “You’re doing it wrong!” But to teach a soldier how to goose-step, you can’t explain it. We do not even have the vocabulary for that. You have to show it, you have to say watch me do this and imitate me. Get someone into a Non-place and then get them to act like you, and you can mold your ‘new man’ after your heart’s desires.

Interviewer: So I should really get this Skype camera working so I can see how you’re positioning yourself.

Dr. Gentile: Be my guest.

Interviewer: Hold on, maybe if I fiddle with this wire….shoot. Can you still see me?

Interviewer: Hello?

Interviewer: Hey are you there? Hello? Dr. Gentile? Are you there?

The dilated triple

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 18:06:25 -0400

Authors: Marko A. Rodriguez, Alberto Pepe, Joshua Shinavier

Title: The dilated triple

Venue: Emergent Web Intelligence: Advanced Semantic Technologies, Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing series, pages 3-16, ISBN:978-1-84996-076-2, Springer-Verlag, 2010

Abstract: The basic unit of meaning on the Semantic Web is the RDF statement, or triple, which combines a distinct subject, predicate and object to make a definite assertion about the world. A set of triples constitutes a graph, to which they give a collective meaning. It is upon this simple foundation that the rich, complex knowledge structures of the Semantic Web are built. Yet the very expressiveness of RDF, by inviting comparison with real-world knowledge, highlights a fundamental shortcoming, in that RDF is limited to statements of absolute fact, independent of the context in which a statement is asserted. This is in stark contrast with the thoroughly context-sensitive nature of human thought. The model presented here provides a particularly simple means of contextualizing an RDF triple by associating it with related statements in the same graph. This approach, in combination with a notion of graph similarity, is sufficient to select only those statements from an RDF graph which are subjectively most relevant to the context of the requesting process.

PhD dissertation

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 17:55:00 -0400

I filed my Ph.D. dissertation on May 27, 2010. You can find it on SSRN (Social Science Research Network) at this link (you may have to click on “One-Click Download” to download it as a PDF).

Here are some details.

Title: Structure and Evolution of Scientific Collaboration Networks in a Modern Research Collaboratory

Abstract: This dissertation is a study of scientific collaboration at the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS), a modern, multi-disciplinary, distributed laboratory involved in sensor network research. By use of survey research and network analysis, this dissertation examines the collaborative ecology of CENS in terms of three networks of interaction: co-authorship of scholarly publications, communication activity on mailing lists, and interpersonal acquaintanceship. This study exposes the topology, structure, and evolution of these networks in relation with the disciplinary and institutional arrangements of CENS. Findings indicate that CENS collaboration networks have fluid, non-cliquish, small-world topologies, and are free of prestige-based mechanisms. Further analysis reveals that structural communities in the co-authorship and acquaintanceship networks overlap considerably. They also exhibit little disciplinary and institutional diversity locally, although CENS becomes more inter-disciplinary over time. Overall, results of the structural and evolutionary analyses point to the importance of interpersonal relationships for accomplishing scientific work in distributed environments.

Keywords: scientific collaboration, collaboratories, cyberinfrastructure, social networks, scientific networks, social complex systems, community structure, assortative mixing, homophily

Suggested Citation: Alberto Pepe, Structure and Evolution of Scientific Collaboration Networks in a Modern Research Collaboratory (May 27, 2010). Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1616935

Faith in the Algorithm, Part 1

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:58:00 -0500

Authors: Marko A. Rodriguez, Alberto Pepe

Title: Faith in the Algorithm, Part 1: Beyond the Turing Test

Venue: Proceedings of the AISB Symposium on Computing and Philosophy, The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour, Edinburgh, Scotland. 2009.

Abstract: Since the Turing test was first proposed by Alan Turing in 1950, the primary goal of artificial intelligence has been predicated on the ability for computers to imitate human behavior. However, the majority of uses for the computer can be said to fall outside the domain of human abilities and it is exactly outside of this domain where computers have demonstrated their greatest contribution to intelligence. Another goal for artificial intelligence is one that is not predicated on human mimicry, but instead, on human amplification. This article surveys various systems that contribute to the advancement of human and social intelligence.

Twitflick: visualizing the rhythm and narrative of micro-blogging activity

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 22:15:00 -0500

Authors: Alberto Pepe, Sasank Reddy, Lilly Nguyen, Mark Hansen

Title: Twitflick: visualizing the rhythm and narrative of micro-blogging activity

Venue: Proceedings of the Digital Arts and Culture Conference 2009

Abstract: Micro-blogging is a form of online communication by which users broadcast brief text updates, or tweets. This article explores the temporal component of micro-blogging activity by emphasizing its narrative nature: an individual tweet is an expression of personal online presence at a given time, yet it necessarily embodies the context of a broader developing story. We present Twitflick, a digital media platform that blends a continuous stream of real-time text updates from Twitter with related user-uploaded images hosted on Flickr. Twitflick acts as a space in which distributed, temporally-authentic personal narratives, in the form of photographs and text, reinforce, extend, and even misrepresent each other. The visualizations provided by Twitflick capture the quotidian rhythms of online social exchange and draw attention to the poetic potential of web 2.0.

Memorabilia californiano (california ghost towns, deserts and...

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 20:45:00 -0500

Memorabilia californiano (california ghost towns, deserts and leftovers). Click here to see the entire set.

Political protest Italian-style

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 15:50:00 -0500

Authors: Alberto Pepe, Corinna di Gennaro

Title: Political protest Italian–style: The blogosphere and mainstream media in the promotion and coverage of Beppe Grillo’s V–day

Venue: First Monday. Volume 14, Number 12. 7 December 2009

Abstract: We analyze the organization, promotion and public perception of “V–day”, a political rally that took place on 8 September 2007, to protest against corruption in the Italian Parliament. Launched by blogger Beppe Grillo, and promoted via a word–of–mouth mobilization on the Italian blogosphere, V–day brought close to one million Italians in the streets on a single day, but was mostly ignored by mainstream media. This article is divided into two parts. In the first part, we analyze the volume and content of online articles published by both bloggers and mainstream news sources from 14 June (the day V–day was announced) until 15 September 2007 (one week after it took place). We find that the success of V–day can be attributed to the coverage of bloggers and small–scale local news outlets only, suggesting a strong grassroots component in the organization of the rally. We also find a dissonant thematic relationship between content published by blogs and mainstream media: while the majority of blogs analyzed promote V–day, major mainstream media sources critique the methods of information production and dissemination employed by Grillo. Based on this finding, in the second part of the study, we explore the role of Grillo in the organization of the rally from a network analysis perspective. We study the interlinking structure of the V–day blogosphere network, to determine its structure, its levels of heterogeneity, and resilience. Our analysis contradicts the hypothesis that Grillo served as a top–down, broadcast–like source of information. Rather, we find that information about V–day was transferred across heterogeneous nodes in a moderately robust and resilient core network of blogs. We speculate that the organization of V–day represents the very first case, in Italian history, of a political demonstration developed and promoted primarily via the use of social media on the Web.

Andalucía, Spain. July 2009. Click to view this set on flickr.

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 03:00:00 -0400

Andalucía, Spain. July 2009. Click to view this set on flickr.

Reinventing airspace: spectatorship, fluidity, intimacy at PEK T3

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:54:52 -0400

Author: Alberto Pepe Gentile

Title: Reinventing airspace: spectatorship, fluidity, intimacy at PEK T3

Venue: ACE: Journal of Architecture, City & Environment. Year IV, Issue 10. Pages 9-19. 2009.

Abstract: In this article, I explore the contemporary practice of air travel conceptualizing airports as socio-technical mobilities. Drawing both from the notion of “space” posited by Michel de Certeau and that of “non-place” by Marc Augé, I argue that the supermodern nature of air travel has generated forms of crisis that have embedded themselves in the architecture and the modus operandi of contemporary airports. Airports are necessarily located in a physical and tangible sense, yet their function is so tightly coupled with transience, mobility and spectatorship, that they bring anthropological accounts of “place” to unprecedented extremes. In this article, I analyze three tensions that are inherently bound to the contemporary practice of air travel and that present themselves as symbiotic phenomena: spectatorship/solitude, fluidity/control, intimacy/sameness. I explore the presence and interplay of these tensions in the spatial (spectatorship), technological (fluidity) and physical (intimacy) arrangements of the recently completed Terminal 3 at Beijing’s International Airport.